Half-way covenant.
In 1657 a council was held in Boston, and in 1662 a synod of all the clergy in Massachusetts was convened to reconsider the decision of the council that all Baptist persons of upright and decorous lives ought to be considered for practical purposes as members of the Church, and therefore entitled to the exercise of political rights, even though unqualified for participation in the Lord's Supper. In 1669 the advocates of the “Half-way covenant” seceded from the old Church, forming a new society, and built a meeting-house, which was succeeded in 1729 by the present Old South Church.
